


Know You're Not Alone (Gonna Make This Place Your Home)

by getgeekywithit



Series: Songs to Darcy [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Family, Home, Mentions of canon character death, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 21:36:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getgeekywithit/pseuds/getgeekywithit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All she could think of was how, for some place five people supposedly inhabited, it barely looked lived in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Know You're Not Alone (Gonna Make This Place Your Home)

**Author's Note:**

> So I might have a thing for Darcy being more than she seems. A big thing. No regrets on that. Fair warning though. Anyways, this a part of a series of [mostly] unrelated oneshots using songs as prompts. The song that prompted this one is 'Home' by Phillip Phillips; it's also where the title came from.

Outside the Tower, no one seemed to know just how long it truly takes them to feel that the space they’re all sharing is a home, that what they got, no matter how fucked up, was a family. After all, all the outside ever saw was the costumes. The teamwork during fights, the banter tossed around as if they fit together seamlessly. And perhaps in costume, when the situation called for it, they did.

 

In the Tower? It was a completely different story. They rarely crossed paths unless they wanted too, and they usually didn’t want to. Tony would spend time with Bruce, but got grouchy if he had to deal with the others much. Bruce could be around Tony and Natasha and Steve but Clint put him on edge. Clint could either never be found or be found with Natasha. Steve tended to just float, not sure if he had a place among these people, a role he could safely inhabit when he was out of his suit. Natasha would show up when you least expected her to, participating in a passing conversation before fading away again. Thor, well, Thor wasn’t around for the first five months.

 

It was when he appeared again, people in tow, that things began to change.

 

“This is the Lady Jane Foster, and this is Lady Darcy Lewis.” He’d announced to them. They were all gathered in the common room, and it was a rare sight indeed. The introductions were a bit unnecessary, if only because they’d all met Jane at one point or another in the last several months as she worked on unlocking the secret to fix the Bifrost or create some kind of viable alternative; and they’d all heard of Darcy, heard Jane bickering with her intern turned assistant on the phone during her visits. But they let Thor make them nonetheless.

 

It was Steve who said, “It’s good to see you again, Dr. Foster. Nice to put a face to the name, Miss Lewis.” And that was what set off all the niceties, though they admittedly didn’t last long. Natasha greeted them, Clint had given a nod, Tony had told Jane they were setting a lab space up for her and told them all Jarvis would be able to guide them to their rooms, and Bruce had made a few inquires about Jane’s current projects.

 

Then, just like that, they were gone, all dispersing to their own spaces to do their own things. Thor and Jane had readily followed Jarvis’ instructions on how to get to the floor they would have, though Darcy hesitated, taking the time to look around the common floor.

 

All she could think of was how, for some place five people supposedly inhabited, it barely looked lived in.

 

* * *

 

 

Darcy had a thing. Well, she had a lot of things, more aptly called quirks, but this one was perhaps one of her most prominent ones. She couldn’t live and take up space somewhere, share that space [even several floors in Stark Tower] with multiple other people, and know that those other people don’t feel like they have a home. It was a quirk that had become very apparent her first year of college, when she’d started by turning her dorm room into a place that didn’t perhaps fit her tastes the best, but it gave her shy roommate a sense of ease, and then expanded to finding those homesick students on her floor [and eventually several more throughout the building] and doing her best to help them find what would make home for them.

 

When she’d gone to New Mexico, she’d taken in the sparse look of Jane’s work space and their trailer and gotten right to fixing that. From those plastic glow in the dark stars that you often saw in kid’s rooms but had adorned the ceiling of the trailer to the pictures Darcy had thrown up on one of the spare cork boards—polaroids she’d taken with her old camera of the progression of her and Jane’s friendship—Darcy had made that place into a home when Jane wasn’t looking.

 

Most people assumed Darcy did it out of kindness; that she just wanted those around her to be happy. And to a degree, she did. But she had her own reasons for going around creating homes for the people around her, and Darcy would categorize them as selfish. Not that anyone had ever asked her.

 

* * *

 

 

Thor and Jane were the easiest—she’d already made a home for Jane once and Thor seemed to feel relaxed and content wherever he could be around Jane and friends. They had each other and Darcy didn’t have to worry about them floating away when she wasn’t looking. Tony was also easy; it wasn’t that he didn’t see the Tower as home, it was that the others didn’t see it that way. For it to really be home for him, all she had to do was make it that for everyone else, push them into a family as corny as that sounded.

 

So in the end, she started with Bruce. He already had Tony slowly pushing him to be more and more social, and he was comfortable in his element of the lab. It was when you took him out of there and stuck him on the common floor that he tensed up. If things were loud [aka Tony and Steve were arguing or Tony was just around in general], he tended to scurry away. Darcy needed to give him a reason to stick around; to talk, to relax.

 

The first time he came when she had JARVIS alert him that she’d made tea, Darcy was pretty sure he did it mostly out of politeness. The times that followed he came because Darcy, surprisingly enough, made kick ass tea. It’d taken four times before she actually got him to stay and have a second cup instead of having him run off back to the lab. And the longer she could get him to stay, the more likely it was someone would show up, Natasha or Steve or Pepper back from some business or another. They didn’t always talk, but Darcy could coax them into staying around with promises of coffee or tea or some baked good she was making. It got to the point that the doctor came looking for tea, and didn’t need to be begged by Darcy to stick around, nor did he retreat just because there was already people around. He would still tense up a bit, hesitate a split second, but Darcy kept reminding herself these things took time; she’d planted the seeds, she just needed to give them time to grow now.

 

* * *

 

 

Steve was next on her list—he’d been easier than expected. “I don’t… I don’t get that reference.” he’d admitted when Darcy had rattled something off about the force.

 

She’d tilted her head at him, eyebrows knitting together. “They don’t show you movies in your ‘learn about the last seventy years’ classes?” she asked, because, well, wouldn’t it make sense to show movies? What better way to convey a time period than a movie from that decade [granted Star Wars probably didn’t make that list, but still]. When he shook his head, she asked another question. “Do you not… like movies?”

 

“I love them—I used to love them.” Steve shrugged. “I might still love them now, but I haven’t seen any to make up my mind.”

 

That was how movie nights started to happen. Just like with Bruce it had started with just her and Steve. Darcy would pick a night when nothing seemed to be happening, no villains, no aliens, no missions, and they’d just sit in the common floor entertainment room with a big bowl of popcorn and throw on a couple movies. They whizzed through the mid to late forties and the fifties, and Darcy was just a bit amazed at how Steve lit up every time she had Jarvis start rolling a new one.

 

It was when they hit the sixties that they started getting company. Thor and Jane first, because Thor was, even more than Steve, so very behind on pop culture. To the point that Disney confused him. And they were watching 101 Dalmatians and Jungle Book that night. Darcy could tell that Steve was more than a bit surprised they had company, but he didn’t object, even with Thor’s various instances of talking during the movies to ask questions that it got increasingly harder and harder not to laugh at. Natasha had been the next to join them, two movie nights later, saying nothing but accepting the popcorn bowl when it was passed around and grabbing drinks for everyone when she got up [how she knew what they all wanted without asking, Darcy didn’t know, but she chalked it up to super spy tricks]. Bruce got sucked in when he came up for tea; Tony when he came looking of his science buddy. Even Clint joined them, when they hit the eighties, and Darcy had to do her best not to jump when she turned and saw him perching on the armrest of the couch, though he hadn’t been there seconds before.

 

* * *

 

 

She’d moved onto Natasha, who unsurprisingly, was difficult. So much so that Darcy caught herself just looking—no, staring –at the other woman sometimes, as if that would unlock the secrets of the universe. And of course, Natasha caught her too.

 

“Darcy, this is the third time you’ve watched me. Is there something you need?” Natasha asked from where she sat on the couch, a book in hand that he didn’t bother to look up from.

 

“I want to be your friend.” Darcy said, without thinking even a little.

 

That did make Natasha pause, mid page turn, and look up at her. She studied Darcy and Darcy just stood there completely still, wandering what the woman was looking for when she watched her like that. “Why?”

 

“I just, uh… we all live here, yeah?” Natasha nodded slowly at Darcy’s words, eyebrows furrowed together. “I like when people feel like they have a home, not just some place they sleep and eat. I have at least some idea of how to do that for everyone else just not…” Darcy trailed off, shrugging.

 

“For me?” Natasha asked, a hint of a smile turning up her lips. Darcy nodded.

 

Natasha watched Darcy for another moment before she looked away and set her book to the side. “I’ve never encountered someone who made it their job to care so much for my comfort, without regard of who I am.” She spoke without looking at the younger woman. “Thank you.”

 

A gentle smile flickered across Darcy’s face, and the part of her that had been internally fidgeting calmed. She knew with that exchange that she’d accomplished what she needed to with the Black Widow. They didn’t need to talk anymore about it.

 

* * *

 

 

From the start, Darcy had known what she needed to do for Clint. In fact, she’d started on him first, if you wanted to get technical. That was because it was far more complicated than any of the others, and she’d had to be sneaky about it on top of that. Sneaky, Darcy could do, and she could do it damn well, but it took time.

 

When she’d gotten what she’d needed to though. She tracked Clint down.

 

Well, actually, she’d made a trap for him. In the form of cookies left out on the kitchen table. Yes, there was always a chance of Thor or Steve blowing through and inhaling all of them, but she knew eventually Clint would come out to have at least a couple, and she’d asked Jarvis to alert her when he did. So okay, it did take three times before she caught him because Steve, Thor, and really unsurprisingly Bruce, did know how to swing in when you least expected them and they apparently _really liked_ her pumpkin spice cookie recipe, but she did it eventually.

 

He tensed when she entered the kitchen. Darcy considered it a pretty neat trick, considering how quietly she was moving, and the fact that he was facing away from her. She didn’t speak until he looked over his shoulder at her, and when she did, she made sure to look directly back at him. “How do you do that?”

 

“Do what?”

 

“I came in, you were facing away. Anytime someone comes up behind you, it’s like you just know, even if you don’t see them.”

 

He considered lying to her, she could see it in the flicker in his eyes. In the end though, he shrugged. “I can feel when someone’s watching me.”

 

“Fair enough.” she conceded, then moved further into the room, toying with a small box in her hands. She took a seat at the table and looked up at him again. “So… can we talk?”

 

“Was that what the cookies were for? To lure me out?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“Fair enough.” he nodded, parroting her words back to her before he sat down across from her.

 

Without a word, she slid the box across the table until it sat in front of him, and the proceeded to watch him stare at it. After awhile she thought she was going to have to assure him it was safe to open, but before she could open her mouth to do just that, he reached out and lifted the cover just a bit. Almost immediately after seeing the contents he was back to staring at her. “Where did you get these?”

 

“Stark.” She said simply, though when his eyebrows shot up, she elaborated. “I didn’t tell him they were for you. I just got him riled up, you know how he is. Make it sound like there’s something he can’t make better than the best that’s already out there and he has to go and top it.” she gestured at the box. “You’re looking at the results.”

 

When he just continued to watch her but didn’t say anything, she sighed. “Look, I’m not going to force you to wear those and I’m not going to tell anyone what you don’t want them to know. The whole point of me getting them for you though is that they’re not noticeable. You can wear them and not a single damn person is going to know. That’s why you don’t wear the one’s you’ve got for missions, yeah? Things that look like comms make sense in the field, but when you’re not out there…” she trailed off, because Clint ducked his head, eyes falling away from her. She knew his hearing wasn’t completely gone, but with the amount of loss he did have, she knew he would miss bits if she kept going.

 

It took several moments, but Darcy was patient and he did eventually look up again. “You don’t spend much time around everyone because it’s frustrating, I get it. Between them all talking a mile a minute half the time, looking away from you while they talk, talking too quietly from too far away—it’s  a lot to deal with.”

 

“Tasha tell you?” he asked, his voice rough. Darcy shook her head. “How do you know any of this then?”

 

She shrugged and stood, Clint’s eyes following her. The smile she gave him was sad. “I know a lot of things that I don’t really want to, Agent Barton.”

 

Darcy left, and Clint looked back down at the box, reaching in and carefully pulling out one of the hearing aids. He tried to focus on that rather than how the way she said ‘Agent Barton’ tugged at him and an awful familiarity he was never supposed to feel again.

 

* * *

 

 

It had been damn near six months. Six months since Darcy swept into the Tower like a storm, changing it for all of them, even if they all weren’t completely aware that she was the catalyst for that change. It was obvious though, that there was clearly a before Darcy time and an after Darcy time. Before Darcy they met in passing, like strangers living under the same roof. Meals together were just a post battle habit, they didn’t invade each other’s space in the way only friends could. There weren’t random movie nights or 3AM conversations over coffee and tea because people couldn’t sleep. After Darcy, they had those things in spades, and a common area that looked lived in; like they were in someone’s home.

 

Not only had it been six months, but they were fast approaching another milestone, a year marker. Everyone was highly aware of it, even if no one spoke directly about it. For almost two weeks things had been growing more and more tense between everyone on the team, everyone bickering and snapping at each other on and off. Throughout it, Darcy said nothing, just looked on. Natasha could catch the flash in the younger woman’s eyes though; as could Clint. They didn’t say anything about it to her, they just kept her between the two of them; more than usual.

 

It was the actual week of the anniversary, only two days before, that she snapped.

 

It was something Tony shot out, in an argument with Steve, that seemed to do her in.

 

“You know, I don’t know why I let any of you live here sometimes, all you all seem to is make everything suck. Why don’t you just go back to that dump of a SHIELD apartment I found you in?”

 

“Stop it!” she yelled suddenly, from where she sat between Clint and Natasha on the couch. They had been helping her with some of her grad school work when Steve and Tony blew into the room, dragging their argument over whatever it was with them. All eyes turned to her, varying from surprised to cautious. Darcy herself looked between Tony and Steve, and then let her eyes travel around the room, catching on everyone. They were all there. “Don’t you people get how lucky you are?! Do you know what some people would give to have a home, to feel safe and like they have some place they belong? And all you want to do if fight and threaten to throw that all away over stupid, petty things? I don’t believe any of you!”

 

“Darcy.” Clint said quietly, and his hand came to rest on her shoulder. She tensed under his touch, and where he expected to her to relax after a moment, instead she pulled away from him and stood.

 

“No!” she said forcefully, not looking at anyone now. “I—I can’t…” she trailed off, shaking her head and brushing out of the room. Clint moved to get up and follow her, but Natasha caught his wrist, shaking her head at him. Grudgingly, he sat back.

 

It was Thor who broke the silence that had fallen over the room. “What is it that has upset the Lady Darcy so badly?”

 

“The fighting.” Bruce answered.

 

“Not just the fighting—she was talking about us taking this for granted.” Jane supplied from her spot beside Thor.

 

“What? Taking what for granted?” Tony.

 

“The fact that we have a home.” Steve.

 

“You’re all right.” Natasha told them, her voice steady. “Darcy has worked hard to give us a home, and none of us have really been respecting that fact as of late.”

 

“Why does that even matter to her though? What does it have to do with her how we feel about this place?” Again, it was Tony.

 

“She told me once she just likes to know that the people she’s living around feel like they have a home.”

 

“That’s not the whole story and you know it Tasha.” Clint said. “No one goes through this much trouble for this many fucked up people because it gives them warm fuzzies.”

 

“Of course I know that.” Natasha snapped, then spoke more quietly. “That’s what she wants us to know though.”

 

“Well I’m not settling for what she wants us to know.” Tony said, striding across the room and grabbing a tablet up from the coffee table.

 

No one stopped him, but eventually Steve spoke. “Stark, what are you doing?”

 

“Getting her file up.”

 

“SHIELD files are restricted, Tony.” Bruce said, as if the classified nature of SHIELD information had ever stopped Tony before.

 

“Oh c’mon. I like the kid, but she’s a glorified gopher at best. We probably have the proper clearances any—” he cut himself of when something beeped on the tablet then let out a low whistle. His fingers flew over the glass, until he seemed satisfied, then flicked out, bringing up several holographic displays. “I stand corrected. You are all looking at what is the only gopher file the requires level nine clearance to have full access.”

 

They all looked on quietly, each seeming to focus in on a specific display. “She looks so young in these pictures.” Jane said, pointing to one display.

 

“Some of those are official SHIELD pictures, she can’t be that young, she only hit our radar two years ago.” Clint said.

 

“Unless she’s been with SHIELD longer than you think.” Tony enlarged one of the pictures. “Because I don’t know about anyone else, but to me that looks like a surly teenager if I’ve ever saw one.”

 

“These records date back to her working for SHIELD at as young as sixteen.” Bruce said from the display he was looking over. “I didn’t think they recruited that young.”

 

“We don’t, for the most part. There would have to be special circumstances.” Clint’s eyes darted between all of the projections, not focusing on any of them.

 

A sting of profanities in Russian flew from Natasha’s mouth, pulling the attention in the room to her. It was one of those moments where she didn’t school her features to utter indifference, instead a look of surprise reigned. Tony did something, flicking his hand so the display she was looking at enlarged and everyone could see.

 

“Oh.” Bruce and Jane said at the same time as they took in the information being projected.

 

“Jesus Christ.” Tony.

 

“Shit.” Clint.

 

Steve looked at Tony. “You said he didn’t have a family Stark! That there was just a cellist!”

 

“He didn’t! This is some fucked up mistake! Don’t you think we would know? That they would’ve been at the funeral? No one there but SHIELD agents and us.”

 

“They had a private funeral.” Natasha said softly, not meeting anyone’s eyes.

 

“Wait, _you_ knew?” Tony asked. “Then why the hell are you so surprised?”

 

“We knew Coulson had a family; a wife and two kids—twins. Most people at SHIELD don’t even know that much, just Fury and Hill.” Clint said. Unlike Natasha, he glared stubbornly at anyone who wanted to meet his eyes. “But we didn’t know anything about them or who they were. Just that Coulson hardly ever saw them, because he wanted them safe. The first time we met them was when Fury sent us to make sure nothing happened at their funeral for him. His wife, Kayla, and his son, Miles, were there but as far as we were told, whether his daughter would show up or not was unsure; they had a rocky relationship. She didn’t show up, and we weren’t given her name.”

 

“It says here they moved around a lot.” Bruce said, looking at the rest of the family history. “And that Darcy started running away when she was twelve.”

 

Tony snorted. “I’m guessing she didn’t get far.”

 

Bruce shook his head. “She didn’t. Never missing for more than a few days at most it looks like. SHIELD kept bringing her back. It looks like it was even Fury a couple times that brought her home.” He flicked his fingers, scrolling the text. “Sixteen she ran away again, and Coulson brought her in-- that’s the first time he’s mentioned as the one bringing her back. And… there, made a deal with Fury to start train with SHIELD rather than return home again.”

 

“That place wasn’t home.” a voice rasped from the doorway. Darcy had returned, looking tired and as if the weight of the world sat on her shoulders. “That was just another safe house he moved us too because he hated the idea of us staying anywhere for more than a year or two. We didn’t have homes. We had my mother always stressed and trying to explain that no, she wasn’t a single parent to every new set of neighbors. We had Miles and me always asking when we were going to see him again, and mom never had the answer. We had places we didn’t get attached to because we were just going to up and leave again.” she shrugged, crossing her arms over her chest, though it ended up looking more like she was hugging herself. “I tried to make them home. It never worked. It was always easier to just leave. I never quite got the hang of finding myself a home, but knowing someone thinks of the place as home is better than nothing.”

 

“Lady Darcy, I do not understand. Do you not view this as being a home to you like it is to us?” Thor asked the question everyone seemed to be stopping themselves from asking.

 

Again she shrugged, tilting her head from side to side. “It’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to one.”

 

“Closest you’ve ever gotten—kid that is such bullshit.” Tony objected, and ignored the warning looks that Steve, Natasha, and Bruce shot him. “You belong here. You might not be a superhero or a mad scientist or whatever, but you’re one of us. We wouldn’t have any of what we have without you pushing for it. If this is our home, it sure as hell is yours too.”

 

“Tony is right, Darcy. If you can’t call this your home, we’ve done something wrong by you.” Steve said and Bruce nodded in agreement.

 

Natasha didn’t stand, but she did reach out a hand to Darcy. The brunette stared at it for a moment before stepping forward, uncrossing her arms so she could take hold of the spy’s hand. Natasha pulled gently, guiding Darcy around the couch until she tugged her down back into the spot she’d previously occupied. Everyone noted but no one said anything about the fact that Natasha continued to hold onto her hand, thumb rubbing small circles on the backside of it. Nor did they mention how Clint’s hand fell onto Darcy’s knee. And they were all kind of relieved when Natasha leaned in and whispered something in Darcy’s ear, something that caused a faint smile to appear on Darcy’s face.

 

No one pushed for Darcy to say anything, because they all knew from experience that you couldn’t force someone to believe something they were being oblivious about. Instead they let the focus drift; Tony turned the displays off in favor of sitting huddled over the tablet [they all knew he was still looking at Darcy’s file—hell even she knew –but ignored that fact], Bruce going back to the journals he’d been ready before, Steve join Jane in her endeavor to teach Thor how to play chess.

 

Darcy didn’t go back to the studying she had been doing before, but she did stay on the couch, snug between the two SHIELD agents. Her head eventually fell to rest on Natasha’s shoulder while Clint’s fingers started combing through her hair.

 

Her eyes were drifting shut as and she spoke softly as she started to doze. “S’nice, having one.”

 

None of them had to ask what she meant, because they knew.

 

Having a home for once felt nice to them too.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is not the end for the whole 'Home' thing either. There will definitely be more oneshots set in this storyline, explaining and expanding on things!


End file.
